For all the talk about Fediverse alternatives to the platforms from Big Tech, it seems that Funkwhale would be the easiest one to get people out of Spotify/Apple Music/ Youtube Music/etc, and I am trying to figure out what is missing to get more people interested and using it.
I think that its main problem is that no instance provides a “public” catalog of songs that can be streamed/downloaded by its users, but its “social aspect” is really cool. You can, e.g, connect with your friends and choose to share your private libraries with each other. So if you have a good mix of friends who kept/ripped their CD/Vynil collection or bought songs from their favorite indie musicians, you can end up with a pretty extensive library. This makes it a decent (and legal) alternative to sneaker-net piracy.
It also seems like a good alternative for indie labels who want to promote their artists. Set up an instance, get accounts for each artists and let them choose if they want to have their catalog available to the public (or only for paying customers, or give an account for everyone that has bought at least one album from their artists, etc). All of that could be done, it doesn’t really cost a lot to operate and it would make them less dependent on Spotify and/or Bandcamp.
The most interesting thing though, it seems to me that, unlike Lemmy, Mastodon and Pixelfed, a music streaming instance does not depend on a “boil the oceans” approach where the platform is only useful if it reaches a substantially large amount of users.
Thoughts? Why is it that Funkwhale is not being more talked about? Have you tried it? What is missing in your opinion?